Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Summer and Mark's vegetable garden is taking on its meadow garden alter ego as he grows food for the butterflies

Latest posts:

1) For us, the flowers of summer are lilies but you need to grow a range of different species to get them performing through the season.

2) Lepidozamia peroffskyana in Plant Collector this week – including how a Russian benefactor came to have an Australian plant named after him.

3) Grow your own garlic and keep vampires at bay. This piece also suggests that the conventional wisdom of planting on the shortest day and harvesting on the longest day may not always be the best advice.

4) Quite possibly the last in the short lived garden diary series done for the Weekend Gardener (unless a miracle happens and the magazine rises like a phoenix from the ashes of liquidation.

Tikorangi notes: Friday 24 February, 2012:

Summer came for three days this week. It was warm enough to entice me into the swimming pool where I looked up at the trees silhouetted against our blue, blue skies and reached for the camera as soon as I got out. I never tire of trees and skyscapes. The elderly pines make a pretty amazing sight even if the one leaning to the right is indeed leaning as much as it appears in the photograph below. One day it may lean beyond the point of balance.

Sadly there is no doubt that a full-on summer is simply not going to happen this year. Yesterday had the unmistakeable hint of autumn. Mark is bringing in grapes every day and muttering about how we had better eat the grapes before the melon harvest starts. Eighty something rock melons, he tells me there are ripening away out in his melon patch. He will have counted them. In the meantime we will not admit defeat and we will eat our way through the grapes. The only crop to rival them here is the green beans, which lack the romance.

The cyclamen are opening which promises an extended delight. The lilies are on their last legs – another torrential rain will spell the end of the auratums but within a few weeks, the autumn bulbs will be starting. That at least is some consolation for a truly disappointing summer.

Our old man pines, Pinus radiata, are large trees after 130 years

Our pregnant gecko, Glenys, is back in view

Latest posts: Friday 3 February, 2012

1) The battle with the water weeds in Abbie’s column this week.

2) One for the dendrologists in Plant Collector this week - Pinus montezumae. It takes a bit to convince most New Zealanders that any pine tree is capable of being special but garden visitors do single our specimen of P.montezumae as being a tree out of the ordinary realm of the common pine.

3) Grow it yourself – silver beet. Some people are even alleged to enjoy eating this iron-rich but utility vegetable.

4) Welcome back Glenys, our highly prized but rather shy resident gecko. We are terribly excited by the evidence that we have a population of gecko in our garden, though that excitement does not appear to have been widely shared by others! But in this country, the small skinks are a common sight whereas our native gecko is nocturnal, elusive and rarely seen.

5) Check out the lily photo album I am building on our Facebook garden page. If you feel inclined to “like” the whole Facebook page, it would be most gratifying. Our popularity on Facebook lags behind the visitor numbers to our websites, and even the subscribers. This may of course just indicate that gardeners are less inclined to use social networks.

The auratum lily season is late this year, but no less spectacular for its delay

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 3 February, 2012

Oh summer, where art thou? Even the auratum lilies seem to be waiting for some real summer heat before opening fully in all their glory. This may go down in history as one of the coolest summers in recent history. On the bright side, the garden is very lush and green and working conditions are not unpleasantly hot. In fact, for Lloyd and I cleaning out the ponds and stream in our park, working conditions have been very pleasant. I just like a little searing heat to justify the fact we have a swimming pool. It has had precious little use so far this year.

Mark is very excited to see the blandfordia coming into flower. I have tried to photograph it but even by our standards, it is still looking a little too modest to boast about. It may look more notable when additional buds open. The reason for our excitement is that it was planted in the rockery by Felix Jury and as Felix died in 1997, it means it has been there for quite a long time and not doing very much. In fact, in all those years, it has only flowered twice before. Its third flowering is cause to celebrate.

Our Lloyd makes a prettier sight than I do when it comes to weeding the pond

Red dahlias for Christmas (but not for Plant Collector profiling)

Latest posts:
1) Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree (Abbie’s column) and why it may be a misnomer to brand the iconic pohutukawa as the New Zealand Christmas tree.
2) While the reasons why philadelphus is often referred to as mock orange blossom may elude me, the pure, fragrant beauty of the flowers at Christmas is above reproach.
3) Was there even life before basil?

The dainty Hydrangea quercifolia "Snowflake"

Tikorangi Notes: Friday December 23, 2011
Just two days before Christmas and the sun is shining brightly, temperatures are rising and there is no wind. After the torrential downpours of last week, it feels like a little Christmas blessing. In the garden we are busy with a grooming round. Well, two of us are. Mark is determinedly following his own path of draining the settling pond which stops our stream in the park from silting up and doing a weeding round. He takes the lion’s share of responsibility for weeding here. Lloyd and I are titivating in preparation for a wedding to be held here on New Year’s Eve.

Other gardens focus on the wedding venue market but not us. Mark prefers people to come because they want to see the garden rather than to see the place used as a venue. I did a handful of weddings a few years ago – singlehandedly because Mark resolutely stuck to his principles and made himself scarce. But then I met… Bridezilla. That was my last ever booking. If I had known how demanding she would be, I would have trebled the price I quoted and even then I do not think that would have compensated for treating me like the hired help in my own garden.

But, we have a wedding coming and we agreed to this one because it is our daughter’s best friend. And it is proving to be a Major Event. Pride says we have to have the top gardens in immaculate condition, even though we know that guests are here for the event and few will do anything more than cast their eyes around and say, “Oh, very nice…”. Given that the colour scheme for the wedding is the wonderfully retro orange and brown, it is perhaps just as well that the dominant garden colour at this time is lush green. We are in the gentle hiatus between late spring flowers and summer lilies, though the hydrangeas are coming into their own.

The garden remains open for visiting each day. There is an honesty box if we are not around. Best wishes for Christmas to all who read this page.

Celmisia - New Zealand's mountain daisy

Latest Posts: Friday 9 December, 2011
1) No fewer than 700 Higo iris waiting to be planted out in Plant Collector this week.
2) Yet another joint venture infomercial masquerading as a reputable garden reference book – the Tui NZ Flower Garden this time.
3) The current quest for self sufficiency, of sorts at least. More a measure of a high quality of life here than a point of principle – Abbie’s column.
4) Grow it Yourself – rhubarb this week.
5) And absolutely nothing to do with gardening but a link to my other website (www.runningfurs.com) where I publish book reviews of a non gardening nature (mostly cookbooks, children’s literature and a bit of adult fiction) – the latest of which was indeed a cookbook: The Molten Cookbook by Michael Van de Elzen. Food porn, my chef friend calls it.

At last the temperatures are rising and it feels as if we may be on the cusp of summer after all. The tall white foxgloves have been bringing me much pleasure, simple though they are. We saw these used to great effect at Hidcote Manor in England but, being a biennial, it has taken eighteen months to get them performing here. I am hoping they will seed down as readily as their pink counterparts (most of which are being consigned to the compost to try and keep the white strain pure).

Sparrows in the Queen Palm condo

We have been somewhat amazed in recent weeks watching the entire condominium of nesting birds in the crown of the Queen Palm (Syragus romanzoffiana) – they must be fifteen metres up and it appears that every nesting space is occupied. The dominant population is sparrows with the odd starling having made a move on vacant property. As we sit in our favourite conversation spot, we look out at the many comings and goings, while the tui nesting in the nearby rimu attempts to patrol the entire area and convince all other birds that they are deeply unwelcome.

The celmisia in flower is a reminder to me of the next website project – building the record of native plants we have in the garden. This is of less interest to New Zealanders who tend to fall into one of two camps – the dedicated purist (natives only) and the rather dismissive (“natives are so boring”). In fact, we use many native plants in the garden but interspersed with exotics. I read an opinion recently that the use of native plants is an important way of anchoring a garden into its environment and its country of origin, which seemed to make good sense.

It is rhodohypoxis time

Latest Posts: Friday November 25, 2011
1) Why would gardening be exempt from fashion? Abbie’s column. It never has been before, but in keeping with modern times, the cycles of fashion are moving ever faster.
2) Yet another lightweight NZ gardening book. Even indexes are expendable these days, apparently.
3) Plant Collector this week: Dracophyllum latifolium or neinei, a seriously cool small tree and a native at that.
4) 100 Gardens by Jamie Durie (Australia’s pin-up boy of landscaping). More about ideas for outdoor spaces than gardening as such.
5) Grow it Yourself – melonsthis week. Preferably rock but water will do at a pinch.

Rhododendron Elizabeth Titcomb to the left, Blue Pacific to the right and R. lindleyi (Ludlow and Sherriff form) caught in their cleavage, as Mark describes it – though nearly strangled might be a better description.

Our unusually cool spring is continuing here, which does at least mean that the spring flowering has been extended way past the usual time. At least the roses have finally opened. We are not the greatest of climates for roses – they don’t appreciate our high humidity – so the first spring blooms are all the more welcome as the bushes are still full of healthy, lush foliage. As the season progresses and black spot strikes, the plants start to look ever more sparse. One can spray roses, of course (and many do) but we choose not to. If a rose plant can not survive and perform without spraying, it ends up in the incinerator.

From left: Caroline Allbrook, Olin O. Dobbs, Elizabeth Titcomb, R. lindleyi and Blue Pacific – a swathe of pink and purple across one side of our carpark.